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No other prejudice has displayed such intensity and historic continuity, nor resulted in such devastating consequences, as anti-semitism. This book provides analysis of both the historical background of anti-semitism and its contemporary manifestations in Europe, the USA and the Middle East.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Wistrich is certainly correct in calling Antisemitism the longest hatred. Almost every culture, from ancient times to the present, has been infected with this philosophy. His book covers its history from Biblical times to the late 20th Century. The first two thirds look at Europan and western attitudes, and how they contributed to the holocaust and have changed since World War II. The final third examines the Islamic world and the present conflict over Israel. This last section is in many ways the most interesting, as it covers material many in the West may be less familiar with.

The greatest weakness here is that while the author gives us many facts, he offers very little in the way of explanation. We learn almost nothing about why antisemitism has been so prevelant or so intense, or why, like a natural disaster, it flares up in cycles every so often. No one expects Wistrich to have the final answer here, but he should have made at least some attempt to discover the reasons for the 'longest hatred'.

Published in 1991, this book predicted the resurgence of the ancient hatred; it was unfortunately correct. In the introduction Wistrich discusses the problematic term Antisemitism then briefly explores its continuity and development down the ages. He does not believe that history provides definitive answers to the Why? of the phenomenon but emphasizes the importance of understanding the How? of it. The most enduring conspiracy theory of all times, it's a shape shifter and nothing seems able to stop it.

Part One examines its pagan roots, its lethal and influential infection of Christianity at an early date and the course it took in Western Europe until the early 1990s. This section includes the medieval legacy when the phenomenon took a particularly ugly turn, Martin Luther, the Holocaust and post-war attitudes in Germany and Austria where it evidently never died. Previously neither the Reformation nor the Enlightenment put an end to it. It instead just mutated along lines acceptable to the Zeitgeist. After World War II the pattern of European guilt-denial has led to increasing anti-Zionism in a process of displacement and projection. Hatred of the Jewish people is being transferred to the Jewish State.

Part Two looks at the history in Britain, France, Hungary, Rumania, Czech, Poland and Russia. Of interest here is how the thing persists even in the absence of Jewish people like in Poland in the late 1980s, and how the US strain has mercifully always been less virulent than the European. I am afraid that things have deteriorated since the publication of this book. The long history of popular and state antisemitism in Russia has been revived, with the country's open support of rogue states and terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran.Read more ›

This is a very learned and convincing study of the history of Anti- Semitism. It is especially illuminating in its understanding of the new anti- Semitism which has come to the Islamic world. The bulk of the book however is devoted to European anti-Semitism and its disastrous culmination in Nazism. Wistrich is a very thorough and broad- ranging scholar and he writes with brilliance about one of the most recurrent evils in the life of mankind.